Nigel waited for his luncheon companion in the crowded vestibule of
London's most famous club restaurant. He was to a certain extent out of
the picture among the crowd of this new generation of pleasure seekers,
on the faces of whom opulence and acquisitiveness had already laid its
branding hand. The Mecca alike of musical comedy and the Stock Exchange,
the place, however, still preserved a curious attraction for the foreign
element in London, so that when at last Naida appeared, she was
exchanging courtesies with an Italian Duchess on one side and a
celebrated Russian dancer on the other. Nigel led her at once to the
table which he had selected in the balcony.
"I have obeyed your wishes to the letter," he said, "and I think that
you are right. Up here we are entirely alone, and, as you see, they have
had the sense to place the tables a long way apart. Am I to blame, I
wonder, for asking you to do so unconventional a thing as to lunch here
again alone with me?"
She drew off her gloves and smiled across the table at him. Her plain,
tailor-made gown, with its high collar, was the last word in elegance.
The simplicity of her French hat was to prove the despair of a
well-known modiste seated downstairs, who made a sketch of it on the
menu and tried in vain to copy it. Even to Nigel's exacting taste she
was flawless.
"Is it unconventional?" she asked carelessly. "I do not study those
things. I lunch or dine with a party, generally, because it happens so.
I lunch alone with you because it pleases me."
"And for this material side of our entertainment?" he enquired, smiling,
as he handed her the menu card.
"A grapefruit, a quail with white grapes, and some asparagus," she
replied promptly. "You see, in one respect I am an easy companion. I
know exactly what I want. A mixed vermouth, if you like, yes. And now,
tell me your news?"
"There is news," he announced, "which the whole world will know of
before many hours are past. France has broken her pact with England."
"It is my opinion," she said deliberately, "that France has been very
patient with you."
"And mine," he acknowledged. "We have now to see what will become of a
fat and prosperous country with a semi-obsolete fleet and a comic opera
army."
"Must we talk of serious things?" she asked softly. "I am weary of the
clanking wheels of life."
He sighed.
"And yet for you," he said, "they are not grinding out the fate of your
country."
"Nevertheless, I too hear them all the time," she rejoined. "And I hate
them. They make one lose one's sense of proportion. After all, it is our
own individual and internal life which counts. I can understand Nero
fiddling while Rome burned, if he really had no power to call up fire
engines."
"Are you an individualist?" he asked.
"Not fundamentally," she replied, "but I am caught up in the throes of a
great reaction. I have been studying events, which it is quite true may
change the destinies of the world, so intently that I have almost
forgotten that, after all, the greatest thing in the world, my world, is
the happiness or ill-content of Naida Karetsky. It is really of more
importance to me to-day that my quail should be cooked as I like it than
that England has let go her last rope."
"You are not an Englishwoman," he reminded her.
"That is of minor importance. We are all so much immersed in great
affairs just now that we forget it is the small ones that count. I want
my luncheon to be perfect, I want you to seem as nice to me as I have
fancied you, and I want you to chase completely away the idea that you
are cultivating my acquaintance for interested motives."
"That I can assure you from the bottom of my heart is not the case," he
replied. "Whatever other interests I may feel in you," he added, after
a moment's hesitation, "my first and foremost is a personal one."
She looked at him with gratitude in her eyes for his understanding.
"A woman in my position," she complained, "is out of place. A man ought
to come over and study your deservings or your undeservings and pore
over the problem of the future of Europe. I am a woman, and I am not big
enough. I am too physical. I have forgotten how to enjoy myself, and I
love pleasure. Now am I a revelation to you?"
"You have always been that," he told her. "You are so truthful
yourself," he went on boldly, "that I shall run the risk of saying the
most banal thing in the world, just because it happens to be the truth.
I have felt for you since our first meeting what I have felt for no
other woman in the world."
"I like that, and I am glad you said it," she declared lightly enough,
although her lips quivered for a moment. "And they have put exactly the
right quantity of Maraschino in my grapefruit. I feel that I am on the
way to happiness. I am going to enjoy my luncheon.--Tell me about
Maggie."
"I saw her yesterday," he answered. "We have arranged for her to come
and live at Belgrave Square, after all."
"My terrible altruism once more," she sighed. "I had meant not to speak
another serious word, and yet I must. Maggie is very clever, amazingly
clever, I sometimes think, but if she had the brains of all of her sex
rolled into one, she would still be facing now an impossible situation."
"Just what do you mean?" he asked cautiously.
"Maggie seems determined to measure her wits with those of Prince Shan,"
she said. "Believe me, that is hopeless."
She looked up at him and laughed softly.
"Oh, my dear friend," she went on, "that wooden expression is wonderful.
You do not quite know where I stand, except--may I flatter myself?--as
regards your personal feelings for me. Am I for Immelan and his schemes,
or for your own foolish country? You do not know, so you make for
yourself a face of wood."
"Where do you stand?" he asked bluntly.
"Sufficiently devoted to your interests to beg you this," she replied.
"Do not let your little cousin think that she can deal with a man like
Prince Shan. There can be only one end to that."
Nigel moved a little uneasily in his place.
"Prince Shan is only an ordinary human being, after all," he protested.
"That is just where you are mistaken," she declared. "Prince Shan is one
of the most extraordinary human beings who ever lived. He is one of the
most farseeing men in the world, and he is absolutely the most
powerful."
"But China," Nigel began--
"His power extends far beyond China," she interrupted, "and there is no
brain in the world to match his to-day."
"If he were a god wielding thunderbolts," Nigel observed, "he could
scarcely do much harm to Maggie here in London."
"There was an artist once," she said reflectively, "who drew a
caricature of Prince Shan and sent it to the principal comic paper in
America. It was such a success that a little time later on he followed
it up with another, which included a line of Prince Shan's ancestors.
Within a month's time the artist was found murdered. Prince Shan was in
China at the time."
"Are you suggesting that the artist was murdered through Prince Shan's
contrivance?"
"Am I a fool?" she answered. "Do you not know that to speak
disrespectfully of the ancestors of a Chinaman is unforgivable? To all
appearances Prince Shan never moved from his wonderful palace in Pekin,
many thousands of miles away. Yet he lifted his little finger and the
man died."
"Isn't this a little melodramatic?" Nigel murmured.
"Melodrama is often nearer the truth than people think," she said.
"Shall I give you another instance? I know of several."
"One more, then."
"Prince Shan was in Paris two years ago, incognito," she continued.
"There was at the time a small but very fashionable restaurant in the
Bois, close to the Pré Catelan. He presented himself one night there for
dinner, accompanied, I believe, by La Belle Nita, the Chinese dancer who
is in London to-day. As you know, there is little in Prince Shan's
appearance to denote the Oriental, but for some reason or other the
proprietor refused him a table. Prince Shan made no scene. He left and
went elsewhere. Three nights later, the café was burnt to the ground,
and the proprietor was ruined."
"Anything else?" Nigel asked.
"Only one thing more," she replied. "I have known him slightly for
years. In Asia he ranks to all men as little less than a god. His
palaces are filled with priceless treasures. He has the finest
collection of jewels in the world. His wealth is simply inexhaustible.
His appearance you appreciate. Yet I have never seen him look at a woman
as he looked at your cousin the first time he met her. I was at the Ritz
with my father, and I watched. I know you think that I am being foolish.
I am not. I am a person with a very great deal of common sense, and I
tell you that Prince Shan has never desired a thing in life to which he
has not helped himself. Maggie is a clever child, but she cannot toss
knives with a conjuror."
Nigel was impressed and a little worried.
"It seems absurd to think that anything could happen to Maggie here in
London," he said, "after--"
He paused abruptly. Naida smiled at him.
"After her escape from Germany, I suppose you were going to say? You
see, I know all about it. There was no Prince Shan in Berlin."
He shrugged his shoulders slightly.
"Well," he admitted, "I don't quite bring myself to believe in your
terrible ogre, so I shall not worry. Tell me what news you have from
Russia?"
"Political?"
"Any news."
She smiled.
"I notice," she said, "that English people are changing their attitude
towards my country. A few years ago she seemed negligible to them. Now
they are beginning to have--shall I call them fears? Even my kind host,
I think, would like to know what is in Paul Matinsky's heart as he hears
the friends of Oscar Immelan plead their cause."
"I admit it," he told her frankly. "I will go farther. I would give a
great deal to know what is in your own mind to-day concerning us and our
destiny. But these things are not for the moment. It was not to discuss
or even to think of them that I asked you here to-day."
"Why did you invite me, then?" she asked, smiling.
"Because I wanted the pleasure of having you opposite me," he
replied,--"because I wanted to know you better."
"And are you progressing?"
"Indifferently well," he acknowledged. "I seem to gain a little and
slide back again. You are not an easy person to know well."
"Nothing that is worth having is easy," she answered, "and I can assure
you, when my friendship is once gained, it is a rare and steadfast
thing."
"And your affection?" he ventured.
Her eyes rested upon his for a moment and then suddenly drooped. A
little tinge of colour stole into her cheeks. For a moment she seemed to
have lost her admirable poise.
"That is not easily disturbed," she told him quietly. "I think that I
must have an unfortunate temperament, there are so few people for whom I
really care."
He took his courage into both hands.
"I have heard it rumoured," he said, "that Matinsky is the only man who
has ever touched your heart."
She shook her head.
"That is not the truth. Paul Matinsky cares for me in his strange way,
and he has a curiously exaggerated appreciation of my brain. There have
been times," she went on, after a moment's hesitation, "when I myself
have been disturbed by fancies concerning him, but those times have
passed."
"I am glad," he said quietly.
His fingers, straying across the tablecloth, met hers. She did not
withdraw them. He clasped her hand, and it remained for a moment passive
in his. Then she withdrew it and leaned back in her chair.
"Is that meant to introduce a more intimate note into our conversation?"
she asked, with a slight wrinkling of the forehead and the beginnings of
a smile upon her lips.
"If I dared, I would answer 'yes'," he assured her.
"They tell me," she continued pensively, "that Englishmen more than any
other men in the world have the flair for saying convincingly the things
which they do not mean."
"In my case, that would not be true," he answered. "My trouble is that I
dare not say one half of what I feel."
She looked across the table at him, and Nigel suddenly felt a great
weight of depression lifted from his heart. He forgot all about his
country's peril. Life and its possibilities seemed somehow all
different. He was carried away by a rare wave of emotion.
"Naida!" he whispered.
"Yes?"
Her eyes were soft and expectant. Something of the gravity had gone from
her face. She was like a girl, suddenly young with new thoughts.
"You know what I am going to say to you?"
"Do not say it yet, please," she begged. "Somehow it seems to me that
the time has not come, though the thought of what may be in your heart
is wonderful. I want to dream about it first," she went on. "I want to
think."
He laughed, a strange sound almost to his own ears, for Nigel, since his
uncle's death, had tasted the very depths of depression.
"I obey," he agreed. "It is well to dally with the great things.
Meanwhile, they grow."
She smiled across at him.
"I hope that they may," she answered. "And you will ask me to lunch
again?"
"Lunch or dine or walk or motor--whatever you will," he promised.
She reflected for a moment and then laughed. She was drawing on her
gloves now, and Nigel was paying the bill.
"There are some people who will not like this," she said.
"And one," he declared, "for whom it is going to make life a Paradise."
They passed out into the street and strolled leisurely westwards. As
they crossed Trafalgar Square, a stream of newsboys from the Strand were
spreading in all directions. Nigel and his companion seemed suddenly
surrounded by placards, all with the same headlines. They paused to
read:
_TRIUMPH OF THE CHANCELLOR_
_HUGE REDUCTION OF THE NATIONAL DEBT_
_TOTAL ABOLITION OF THE INCOME TAX_
They walked on. Naida said nothing, although she shook her head a little
sorrowfully. Nigel glanced across the Square and down towards
Westminster.
"They will shout themselves hoarse there this afternoon," he groaned.
For the first time she betrayed her knowledge of coming events.
"It is amazing," she whispered, "for the writing on the wall is already
there."